The Starpath Project Annual Report 2012
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The Starpath Project Annual Report 2012 Starpath A University of Auckland Partnership for Excellence THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND STARPATH ANNUAL REPORT 2012 1 Starpath A University of Auckland Partnership for Excellence Project Name: Starpath Partnership for Excellence Department: Faculty of Education Review Period: 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012 Starpath Project The University of Auckland Epsom Campus Faculty of Education Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142 [email protected] www.starpath.auckland.ac.nz Contents Reports: From the Chair 5 From the Director 5 Starpath helping to achieve equity in our schools 6 Scaling up: Sharing Starpath strategies for success 8 Partner school profiles: Otahuhu College 10 Ruawai College 11 Breaking down the barriers between home and school 12 Growing strategic leadership for school improvement 14 Lifting subject literacy in original Starpath schools 16 Research summaries 18 Tracking students into tertiary 20 The Starpath toolkit 21 Data systems in secondary schools: The state of play 22 Project outputs 24 Project media coverage 25 Future directions 26 THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKlaND STARPATH ANNUAL REPORT 2012 As the first navigators crossed the Pacific they followed the stars from island to island. At the beginning of their journey, they found the star which marked their direction, and followed it until it sank towards the horizon. Then they located the next star on the star path, and the next, and the next, until they reached their destination. The Starpath Project for Tertiary Participation Starpath’s significant achievements to identify pathways that lead to success and and Success was established in 2005 to date include: overcome barriers and risks to achieve address disparities in educational achievement their potential. for Māori and Pacific students and students • Innovating the use of educational data to from low socio-economic communities by: track students over time, and determine The Starpath name evokes the feat of the whether or not they are fulfilling their Polynesian star navigators in crossing the • Raising the sights of students, teachers, potential. Pacific, their daring and determination and the advisors and parents. navigation skills that carried them safely to their • Identifying ways in which talented young destination. • Addressing key ‘chokepoints’ or barriers to people from these groups may be steered educational success. away from pathways that lead to low Starpath encourages students to follow their income and insecure futures towards those own path by identifying their goal, setting • Opening up pathways to tertiary education that lead to higher education. their direction and navigating their way with for students with the potential to succeed, the aid of good data, sound advice, family and ensuring that they achieve their dreams • Changing these patterns by developing teacher support, and high quality teaching and aspirations. research-led strategies to ensure that and learning. students can express their aspirations, Purapura Whetū (star seeds or star dust) is a stunning tukutuku panel that lines the walls of Tutahi Tonu, the wharenui at Te Aka Matua o Te Pou Hawaiki Marae, located at The University of Auckland Epsom Campus. The panel represents the multitude of stars in the sky with many located in Te Mangōroa, the Milky Way, and signifies the importance of a large family, (hapū, iwi) in being able to develop and sustain one’s future quality of life. 4 STARPATH GOALS AND ACHIEVEMENTS Reports Starpath A University of Auckland Partnership for Excellence to look to alternatives to the public school Tertiary Education Commission. The Board is system for solutions. pleased to report that, with a major donation from the ASB Community Trust’s Māori and Our commitment is to work with the public Pacific Education Initiative, it has completed school system to enhance processes of goal this task. We are very appreciative of the setting, tracking and monitoring student Trust’s confidence and continuing support. The achievement, and to involve students, teachers other half of the funding depends on meeting and families in lifting academic performance. key performance indicators agreed with the Our new partner schools have committed to Tertiary Education Commission. Performance the Starpath strategies because they have seen against the 2011 indicators was approved by them work in the pilot schools and because the TEC in March 2012. they know they must bring about change. None of this is easy, but we are all involved because The Board would like to thank Mr Rob we know this work is essential to secure the McIntosh, who has been its Ministry of future of many of our young people and of Education representative for four years, and the country. welcome his replacement, Anne Jackson. We also thank the Starpath Director, Our original aim was to increase the numbers Professor Elizabeth McKinley, Professor Stuart and proportions of students in Starpath schools McNaughton, who acted as Director during progressing into degree studies. Students from Professor McKinley’s research leave, the project the five pilot schools are now entering tertiary team and school partners. Their work for From the Chair institutions. Starpath has collaborated with Starpath has been unstinting. This year has been another important year for the Ministry of Education and, with permission Starpath with its expansion into an additional from the schools, we are now tracking these Professor Raewyn Dalziel 34 secondary schools in the Auckland and students into tertiary studies. Chair, Starpath Board Northland region. This expansion comes at a time when the Government has placed an even Starpath is required by its contract with the higher priority on addressing inequalities in Crown to raise private funding to match half educational outcomes and when it has started of the public funding received through the and 24 in Auckland. We wish to thank all the have eight full-time research and professional schools for agreeing to partner with Starpath development staff who work on establishing so that we can work together towards the and managing databases, and using them to important goal of raising student achievement. carry out work on target setting, tracking and We feature some of the new schools later in monitoring progress, academic counselling this report. and parent-student-teacher meetings. In addition, Starpath has joined with the Woolf There are no ‘silver bullets’ to raising student Fisher Research Centre and The University of achievement - it requires relentless attention Auckland Centre for Educational Leadership and persistence from the school leadership to carry out literacy and leadership work. through to the classroom teachers over a long This represents another eight part-time staff period of time. One of the roles of the Starpath working specifically in this area. I would like team is to assist schools in keeping their focus to acknowledge the hard work of all the wider on the goals, and to provide timely and useful project team. I wish to thank the Deputy feedback so they can improve their practice. Director, Joy Eaton, who has the complex job of While we work with schools mainly, carrying coordinating the team’s activities in all schools. out evaluation research and professional Last, but not least, I would also like to thank development, Starpath has also turned its Professor Stuart McNaughton for taking up the attention this year to how we can contribute Director’s role in my absence late last year. to initial teacher education. One of the aims in moving forward in 2012/2013 will be how we Professor Elizabeth McKinley From the Director can disseminate our work to beginning teachers Director, Starpath Project Welcome to the Starpath Project Annual Report and teachers not in our partner schools through for 2011/2012. We are now 18 months into the offering of a special topic masters course. Phase Two and the Starpath partner school family has grown to 39 secondary schools. As the number of schools has increased, so has Fifteen of the schools are located in Northland the number of staff working on Phase Two. We THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND STARPATH ANNUAL REPORT 2012 5 Starpath helping to achieve equity with excellence in our schools New Zealand’s education system has often been described from OECD reports as being high quality but low equity. But what does this mean? In essence, it means that New Zealand students, as a group, score well on international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), but the disparity between the highest and the lowest scoring students is too wide. While equality and equity are common words in education, we rarely opportunities and support in school if those opportunities are not interrogate what they mean for schools beyond measuring performance supported when they leave the school gates. Starpath’s parent-student- outcomes of groups of students and participation in some educational teacher conferences are a platform for the school to assist in helping activities. Equality (often coupled with ‘of opportunity’) has come to parents to learn about their child’s school life, school assessment, mean avoiding discrimination and making sure all students are given student data, and the education system generally. Importantly they are the same opportunity as others. Equity, on the other hand, refers to an opportunity to help parents/whānau to learn how they can support performance, and takes the meaning of having the opportunity to attain their child’s learning at home. The conferences are also an important the same results, usually through the unequal distribution of resources to opportunity for the school to learn more about the student from the ‘even up the playing field’. The relationship between equality and equity home. Parents will be more likely to support learning if they feel they are is that students cannot reach an outcome without having, at least, an valued partners in their child’s learning, if they believe that education opportunity to achieve it, but the reverse does not hold.